Tensers Transformation Enhancement

[kilagan800]

Earlier in the week I read about someone wanting to change tensers tranformation in some way, and the other day in the magic user forum someone asked if tensers could be turned off or will they have to wait for the spell to end. So, with everyone knowing that tensers transformation is pretty much useless, I figured I'd leave a suggestion: remove tensers transformation from the spell list and make it an enhancement for wizards and sorc's.

If a group needs haste, the spell caster can turn it off and caste the spell.

Add a cooling down period, like how lich form used to be.

Anyway, just an idea. Feel free to shoot it down, drag it through the mud and throw it off a cliff.

[donfilibuster]

/notsigned
Having a spell, any spell, as an enhancements amount to have it be an ability or SLA, and such thing for a level VI spell would be too powerful or costly.

Nothing says spells have to be always useful, some are on the list 'just in case', as if you don't need to have stat gear.
spellcasting, clickies, gear items, potions, they aren't in competition to each other, you can't say "hey, there's clickies who need this spell, make it better".

Furthermore wizards are supposed to have a long list of spells of which ddo only have a small set.
In PnP there can be plenty of overlapping spells where you can safely go with the best one and ignore the others.
You can even make your own spells and you are not stopped from making crappy spells.

Tenser is one such wizard that made a crappy spell and since there's not many tenser spells he probably didn't lived long to make new ones.
At least not like Mordenkainen, but his spells were rather safe to use and non-combat so he lived to research many spells.
Otiuke's was far more successful with offensive spells, having things from freezing spheres and disco balls of dancing.
So when arguing about how useless Tenser is, remember he may have died while testing it.

Anyways, divine casters have divine power since clerics are quite able for combat and inspired with divine blessings.
Arcane casters have it much more difficult, they can manage to fight and cast but it is never easy.
Tenser is fine, we just can do better with clickies of divine power.

[hityawithastick]

You can even make your own spells and you are not stopped from making crappy spells.

Tenser is one such wizard that made a crappy spell and since there's not many tenser spells he probably didn't lived long to make new ones.
At least not like Mordenkainen, but his spells were rather safe to use and non-combat so he lived to research many spells.
Otiuke's was far more successful with offensive spells, having things from freezing spheres and disco balls of dancing.
So when arguing about how useless Tenser is, remember he may have died while testing it.

Anyways, divine casters have divine power since clerics are quite able for combat and inspired with divine blessings.
Arcane casters have it much more difficult, they can manage to fight and cast but it is never easy.

I tip my hat to you sir. Rarely have I encountered such all-inclusive knowledge of magical history.

[kilagan800]

/notsigned
Having a spell, any spell, as an enhancements amount to have it be an ability or SLA, and such thing for a level VI spell would be too powerful or costly.

Nothing says spells have to be always useful, some are on the list 'just in case', as if you don't need to have stat gear.
spellcasting, clickies, gear items, potions, they aren't in competition to each other, you can't say "hey, there's clickies who need this spell, make it better".

Furthermore wizards are supposed to have a long list of spells of which ddo only have a small set.
In PnP there can be plenty of overlapping spells where you can safely go with the best one and ignore the others.
You can even make your own spells and you are not stopped from making crappy spells.

Tenser is one such wizard that made a crappy spell and since there's not many tenser spells he probably didn't lived long to make new ones.
At least not like Mordenkainen, but his spells were rather safe to use and non-combat so he lived to research many spells.
Otiuke's was far more successful with offensive spells, having things from freezing spheres and disco balls of dancing.
So when arguing about how useless Tenser is, remember he may have died while testing it.

Anyways, divine casters have divine power since clerics are quite able for combat and inspired with divine blessings.
Arcane casters have it much more difficult, they can manage to fight and cast but it is never easy.
Tenser is fine, we just can do better with clickies of divine power.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Guess I would've liked to see tensers implemented in a more useful way somehow. And lol @ your tensers comment. Maybe if he had lived long enough he would've made something to go along with his Transformation spell

[samthedagger]

Tenser's transformation is a niche spell. It's good for soloing casters who like to melee since it boosts your base attack and gives you a natural armor bonus which is almost as good as that you can get from a ranger's barkskin. Honestly I think the only "improvement" they need to make is to reduce the duration to 6 seconds per level so that you can re-up it at the same time you re-up haste.

[voodoogroves]

Um no. Tenser created one of the best spells ever ... FLOATING DISK.

Then I think the other wizards must have beat him up, because then he made a crappy transformation spell. He thought he was smart, just didn't realize that he was totally outclassed by all those wizards who got to 20 with a BAB of 16 or higher and 9th level spells naturally ... on the ones that used the polymorph/shapechange spells to make him completely irrelevant ... or the ones that just got Divine Power on their list somehow and used it because it was simply BETTER.

He still had floating disk though, and that was good because it gave him a place to curl up and go fetal.

[donfilibuster]

Um no. Tenser created one of the best spells ever ... FLOATING DISK.

omg. you are right. how could i forget a spell that gave so much discussion about wether or not you could use it to climb onto things.

found these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...awk_characters

now we can know for sure Tenser was one of the first wizards to reach the upper wizard-levels and lower dungeon-levels.
apparently he used to have hirelings in the party, which may explain the need for meleeing a bit.
but despite likely having a hard time he didn't die, but instead of researching new spells he went into, uhm, consulting.
not a very heroic ending but surely inspired other senior wizards in greyhawk to develop the classic spells.

p.s. well, he did had new spells, but his genius was ahead of his time so we missed on gems such as Tenser's Floating Disc, Greater

[Raodin-bel-iori]

I think the only thing they need to do to make tensers transformation more useful is to allow it to be cast on others as a high level buff rather than making it a self only spell.